


Collateral Damage

by temporalDecay



Series: distrait shorts [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 20:33:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporalDecay/pseuds/temporalDecay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I did a timestamp meme in tumblr and all the results were for <em>Distrait</em>. So here are all four ficlets, edited for coherency. In order:</p><p>The Aftermath of <em>Into The Purple Night Sky</em>, Eridan's first day aboard the <em>Leviathan</em>, a day before <em>Breathe In</em> and Eridan calming Psii down after the end of <em>Breathe In</em>.</p><p>This will make absolutely no sense if you haven't read those.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral Damage

  


* * *

  


  


* * *

  


“So this is where you’re hiding.” 

You take a moment to give Russel a look, before taking aim again. The range is pretty empty, but the head instructor likes you enough to let you unwind for a bit, provided you clean up all the rifles afterwards. It’s not a bad trade, and the mindlessness of the whole thing helps you relax. 

“I’m not hiding,” you mutter, after you put a bullet square in the center of your target. 

“Oh, you’re not?” 

You make a point to eject the spent magazine loudly, before turning towards the rack where the rifles you’re supposed to clean today are waiting. You give two steps before you find yourself lying on the floor, one arm pulled back tightly and the heel of Russel’s hand pushing on your neck. 

“You’re hiding, Ampora, because you’re skipping meals and study sessions and you won’t bother to look at Agness in the eye. Me neither, but that’s not that bad, I don’t take it personally. She does.” 

“She’s scared of me,” you whine in the back of your throat, but don’t bother trying to get out of the hold. 

Russel is much, much better at hand to hand than you’ll ever be. 

“She’s scared of what you did,” he hisses, right against your ear, “which is pretty fucking different, if you stop to think about it. I’m fucking terrified of what you did, but then I remember what _I_ can do to you, and it makes me feel better.” Despite yourself, you shiver under him, because yes. Yes, you know what he can do to you. “I don’t know why you’re having a problem with it now, I thought I’d made it clear we were never going to talk about it again.” 

“I’m not talking about it.” 

“Your actions are talking about it,” he says, tugging hard on your arm, enough to make it throb a little. “Now, the way I see it, you can either stop being a moron on your own and go reassure Agness that you’re not pissed at her. Or I beat the shit out of you until you stop being a moron and you go reassure Agness that you’re not pissed at her. Either way, you stop freaking out and she stops feeling like she fucked up somehow.” 

“And you?” You ask, just because you’re a dick and a moron and you’re _scared_. 

“I’m looking forward to enjoying the peace and quiet in my block once my blockmates stop being fucking idiots about shit. Possibly planning to fuck them both until their ridiculous masochistic souls are happy.” 

You lie on the ground, breathing sharp and hurried. In. Out. Your eyes sting, from more stupid wiggler tears. 

“There’s a thing,” you say, hoarse from all the tears you’re choking on, “in my head. I think I woke it up doing what I did. It’s. It’s a highblood thing,” you say softly. “I’m just—” 

“You’re not going to do it again,” Russel says, with that strange certainty of his that makes you tremble. “At least, you’re not going to do it again without provocation. It’s not a highblood thing, Eridan. It’s called being shoved into a wall and feeling you’re going crazy because you realized you could shove back.” 

“I—” 

“Helped your friend from a bad situation. Shit got weird. Don’t make it weirder," his voice is less of a warning and more of a kind comfort. 

You wish he weren't always so kind, you don't deserve it. 

“I used to tell myself I enjoyed that,” you say, not quite sure when the grip on your arm stopped hurting. “It made me sick, in the beginning. But it grew on me. Or I forgot it made me sick in the first place. I used to like it or I used to like the idea of liking it. Genocidal complex, I called it. That was my thing. I was very, very good at it from a distance, so long as I didn’t have to think about it.” 

“That wasn’t from a distance.” 

“I _know_ that. It… it was gross, okay. Gross and stupid and so ridiculously satisfying I could cry. I’d do it again, without a second thought.” You swallow hard. “And now I don’t… know, exactly. What I’m doing. It’s got me thinking about… things I’ve said. And done. And I’m just—” 

He folds you into his lap and you’re glad the damn range is empty because even if it weren’t you’d be clinging all the same. 

“We’ve been through this, Fins,” you nuzzle the side of his face, melting under the hands rubbing your spine. “You’re not murderously crazy, you’re stupidly crazy. You think too hard, too much about the wrong things.” 

“I’m capable of—” 

“A good deal of stupidity, yes.” If you had the smallest bit of spine, you’d bite him for kissing you. You think about it. Then you melt into it for as long as he’ll let you, which is nowhere near as long as you’d hoped. “Lucky for you, you have friends who don’t dig that shit. So stop being dumb and go make Agness stop sulking.” 

There’s an _or else_ in that, and you’re not sure you want to ask. 

“I’m sorry,” you say, looking at the floor. 

“Yeah,” Russel says after a moment, ruffling your hair unrepentantly. “I guess you’d be, huh.” 

  


* * *

  


  


* * *

  


The first rule of a successful admin is to observe. If you don’t observe, you don’t know. If you don’t know, you can’t fix. If you can’t fix, you get culled. As you don’t have much of a desire to be culled, not after nearly a week sharing Karkat’s quarters and enjoying all the beautiful things in them - namely, Karkat himself - you report for duty with the same punctuality you did to your classes. You avoid the formal uniform, since this is hardly formal, and take the time to familiarize yourself with the layout of the ship as you go. There’s something odd, about the _Leviathan_. You read the specs as soon as Karkat told you he was putting you to work in his ship, but something doesn’t quite fit in. You shove the thought to the back of your mind as soon as you meet your direct superior. 

There’s a new head admin as well, since from what you’ve read the ship goes through them like wet paper towels, but you don’t really care right now. You need to get a grip of your duties before you can even start considering inner politics. That was something your audit teacher was very insistent on. You were assigned to the hangars, working under a newly promoted defense admin that gives you a squinty look when he sees you. You brace yourself for a long, tedious explanation of where you came from and who you are, but it never comes. 

“Captain said it was okay?” Is all he asks, and once you nod he completely drops the subject all together. “Never been on one of these before, have you? Can tell,” he says, grinning under a bushy mustache. “You got that twitchy look of someone realizing numbers on a screen are nowhere near as fucking big as these bitches are. C’mon, we’ll go have a walk and get you settled in. We’ve got a lot of work to do, I want you settled in and doing your thing on your own by tomorrow.” 

The bitches in question, as it turns out, are the warships. A fuckload of them. Your job is relatively simple. Relatively. You gather the information and reports from the ships and channel them either to your superior - Admin Munire - or to the garbage. You don’t ask or argue. Everyone knows 99.99% of admin work is knowing when to do something and when to ignore complaints because someone is being a brat about shit. The most important thing is to do things the way your superior needs them. So if he says you ignore all communications from someone, you will ignore all communications from someone. If he wants things filed a certain way or in a specific order, you do it that way and dont' ask stupid questions. Halfway through the tour, however, a lanky blueblood stomps up to you. 

“For the last fucking time, Munire,” the man snarls, “where are my fucking spares? I’ve been docked here nearly a fucking week!” 

You decide you like Admin Munire, when all he does is stare at him, utterly unimpressed. 

“I’ll get you your spares when you learn to file for them, Captain Jaleel.” 

“Is this your idea of funny, Munire?” Captain Jaleel snarls unpleasantly, trying to shove a tablet in the man’s face. “Because I’ve filed them. Six times!” 

“You filed them wrong,” Munire says, as calm and relaxed as ever, absently putting the Captain’s tablet in your hands. You blink at it, scanning it without a second thought. “ _For the last time_ ," he says, with a slightly ironic twitch in his tone that makes you decide you _really_ like him, "I’m not going to order you X-5 parts for a CL warship. Waste of parts, waste of time. Neither of which, by the way, we have to spare.” 

“You little—Hey!” 

You realize, after a moment, that they’ve shifted their attention to you. Might be because you’re in the process of crawling up the open hull of what those forms said is Jaleel’s ship, not unlike a very flexible monkey. 

“Just proving a point,” you yell back, twisting and turning until you get into the right gap in the fuselage. “Found it!” 

“Found what?” Jaleel snarls from down below. 

“Your problem,” you say, after you squirm back out, holding a piece of the ship in your hand. 

“Look now, smartass, I don’t—” 

“This,” you interrupt dropping the cylinder into his hand, “is the part you want. Z-9, not X-5. X-5 can’t handle the compound pressure of anything bigger than a class CC. The Z-9 can and does. Your mechanic should know that, unless he’s an inbred moron who enjoys watching your ship get structural damage all the time." You absently wipe your hands on your pants and give him an utterly innocent smile. "Your hull’s about to give, too, by the way.” 

“Who the fuck do you—” 

“Take it to the Chancellor if you don’t like it,” Munire snaps, hooking an arm with yours and dragging you along away from the ship. “Care to explain that?” He asks, once you're well out of earshot. 

“I’m terrible at remembering catalogs,” you admit after a moment, fidgeting now that the excitement is over. “Lists and lists of numbers and names and codes. Found it was easier to memorize all that if I knew what it did. There’s a logic behind the system. He was being fucking stupid and from the looks of it, at the end of your patience so. Figured it’d help set him straight.” 

You wait expectantly for him to get pissed and finally admit to yourself that you’re far too nervous for words. 

“Yeah,” he says, thoughtful. “There is. Not a lot of people care about the logic in it, though. Even less bother to crawl into a ship’s hull to prove a point.” 

You allow yourself a very small smile. 

“I’m not a lot of people.” 

He snorts. 

“No, you’re not.” There’s a pause. “I’ve changed my mind, though. You’re not going to hangars.” You freeze. “You’re staying in my office.” 

You wonder if you’ve managed to fuck shit up so soon. 

“Why?” 

“Because I need a bitch to sort my paperwork for me, and you, kid, you look just like the right idiot to do it.” 

At dinner, you wonder how to explain to Karkat that you’ve been demoted and promoted all at once on your first day. 

  


* * *

  


  


* * *

  


“You’re doing the thing again.” 

Eridan stops for less than a second, fingers caught in the air before he goes back to tapping on keys with the tip of his claws - a hideous habit you might never breaking off of, at least not until he breaks one - numbers and letters flooding the screen at a ridiculous speed. He reminds you of Sollux, when he’s like this. At least, he reminds of what Sollux used to be like, before. Eridan sits on his chair and his fingers dance across the keyboard as he pulls half the data off the top of his head, rather than the careful reports in his tablet. You’d be more worried if he weren’t so thorough. He knows what he’s doing and sometimes you think sitting here, looking over numbers and codes, is the closest to peaceful certainty he’ll ever get. He’s not happy when he’s like this, but he’s confident. 

You remember Eridan, when you were six. And when you were eight. And when you were ten. You remember the august posture and the decidedly regal tilt of his walk, back then. He was an absolute wreck, but he could still carry the cape and not get mocked for it. You don’t think he could carry it now, not even when he’s storming down corridors with all his runts crowding and snarling at him about this and that. There’s an ugly tilt to his back, these days, where his spine broke. You miss the arrogance and the confidence, but you don’t know how to bring them back without undoing everything that kept him from getting killed. 

“The silence,” he says, with a decidedly amused tone, “means I’m waiting for you to explain what the thing I’m supposedly doing is, Kar.” 

You stare at the screen instead. He goes through forms too fast for you to even read the first line - and you’re good at reading fast. He reminds you of Sollux, at times like this, and you wonder what either of them would have to say about that. 

“The twitchy, intense, I-need-to-be-stabbed-and-thoroughly-hurt thing,” you say, matter of fact, and resist the urge to go sit on his desk because the gesture reeks too much of cheap porn. Eridan hates cheap porn. “You need a black laid.” 

“I’m fine,” he says, because he always says that. He’s always fine. He’s always okay. You’re fairly certain he could be dying and if he saw you, he’d still try to tell you he’s okay. You love the stupid shit so much you might burst one day. There’s a small pause. “But if you could… maybe… be coaxed to bring out the knife after dinner…” 

You consider saying yes. You’ve said yes before. You’ve sat on his hips and laid him out on a concupiscent platform, only to draw swirls and words and _the world_ on his skin with the tip of a knife. He bleeds prettily. All violet and slick, and he cries and thanks you for it when you do it. You don’t like it, though. It makes your hands shake and you’re certain one day you’ll fuck up and the bleeding won’t stop when it should, even if you know that as a seadweller his endurance is ridiculous. 

It’s not the knife or the bleeding that freaks you out. Not really. It’s the fact it’s so _flushed_. You look at him sometimes and wonder when - not if - you’re going to flip black for him. It seems obvious that you would. He’s a hateful bastard and you know it very well, no one knows it better than you. But even when you hurt him, in all the myriad of ways he’s taught you how to hurt him, it’s always so _flushed_. You burn for him with the brightest red, as red as the blood in your veins. You’re certain you’ll end up flipping on him one day, but the day never comes. 

“I think you should go out,” you say instead, because that’s a nice way of saying no without actually _saying_ no - you have issues, saying no to Eridan, and everyone’s convinced he’ll take advantage of it but the truth is that you say yes so often because he so rarely asks for anything. You give him a significant look and his hands stop as he looks at you again. “It’s a nice station and all, I’m sure you could find someone to spend some time with.” 

“I’m pretty sure you’re the only matesprit in the history of trollkind that encourages their partner to go pick up one-day stands in shitty bars.” 

“Yes, well,” you scoff and then crawl into his lap, because there are very few places that make you feel as safe and loved as sitting in his lap. “I’m the only one that has _you_ as their matesprit.” You arch up into his touch, when his fingers dig into your hair. “You need to get laid, so go get laid.” 

He purrs for you. You will never get tired of hearing that sound. 

“Don’t wanna,” he whines, soft and childish. “I’d rather stay here and have you today.” 

You nuzzle the side of his face. 

“Tomorrow, then.” 

His breathing hitches when you catch a ring between your teeth, tugging at his fin ever so lightly. 

“Must I?” 

He sounds breathless already. You suck on the metal just for the pleasure of feeling him tremble under you. 

“It’ll do you good.” 

  


* * *

  


  


* * *

  


He held you up nearly twenty minutes, before he let you put your feet back on the ground. You don’t really mind. You probably should, all things considered, but you find it very hard to believe he’d hurt you. The grip of his psionics on your skin was gentle, in that odd, non solid way that never lets you know where you’re being hold, except for the fact that you are. When he was satisfied, you floated back down, wiggled your toes a bit, and shoved him forcefully into the pile. It’s a magnificent pile, all soft and plushy and nice. 

You’ve been here hours now, as you hold your moirail to your chest, fingering his hair and gently running a claw along the curve of a horn. He’s not talking, so you don’t, either, because he needs the silence. He’s processing. So you just hold him close, let him feel your skin on his, and wait quietly for him to be done. He’s lying on your side and one of your legs, which is terminally asleep by now, but you don’t care. You’re not going anywhere anytime soon. 

“I did a terrible thing out there,” he says, breath tickling the gills on your neck before he pulls away to sit up somewhat, He swallows hard, looking up at you with dry eyes that tear up as you look into them. “A terrible, horrible thing.” You hold his face in your hands, fingers brushing over thick, scarred skin tinted the same golden as his blood. That usually helps him relax, but all it does now is make those tears gather more and more on the rim of his eyelids. “And I’m not sorry.” 

“Psii—” 

“Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead.” It’s not an accusation or a threat. It’s an emotionless statement that makes your insides clench with sheer, unabridged _pity_. “All of them, each a gruesomer fate than the one before. They’re gone now, all of them.” His hands reach for your face, claws digging into your jaw almost hard enough to break skin. “All of them but _you_. You inconsistent, selfish, arrogant, meanspirited, petty _bastard_.” 

He does break skin and he’s pulling uncomfortably on your stitches. You don’t care, you seem to have misplaced your voice, which frankly doesn’t matter because then he’s leaning in and pressing his mouth to yours with enough strength you think you might honestly die. He folds into you, like a sail whose wind has been stolen, and you find yourself holding him to you as tightly as you can manage. You slide your mouth off his, so you can trail little, loving kisses along his jaw and up to those cheekbones that look more like razor blades. You press kisses to his eyes, ignoring the tingle of his powers twitching against your lips and then up to his forehead. You say nothing because the thing with Psii… the thing you’ve learned, is that words don’t help him. Not really. It does him good, to talk and share and remind himself he has a voice he can use whenever he wants to. But he’s been deceived too much, he’s been told so many comfort lies, that talking just gets in the way. So you hold your moirail and kiss and shoosh and pap and hold and love him; a constant reminder that whatever he has to say, you’re not going away. But you don’t give him empty words or kind platitudes. It wasn’t like this, with Fef. You don’t know what that means, except that this works and that didn’t. 

“I did something terrible tonight,” he says, once he’s just the slightest bit less tense, pulling back so he can stare at your face again. He does that, you know, because he’s used to being lied to. He does that because he needs to see the truth on someone’s face, when he’s talking to them. You’ve never lied to him, but that doesn’t mean you resent his habits, anymore he resents yours. “And you’re not allowed to die, you hear me? _Because I’m not sorry_.” He swallows hard again. “Because I’ll do it again and I still won’t be sorry. Everyone I’ve ever loved is dead but you.” He surprises you then, by breaking eye contact and dropping his weight on yours, melting in your arms. “I’m tired of giving up the people I love without a fight.” 

You don’t promise him to be there forever. You don’t promise him you won’t die. You don’t promise not to do something stupid ever again. 

Because these days you don’t make promises you’re not damn fucking certain you can keep. Because he deserves better. 

You kiss the crown of his head, right between his horns, once you’re sure he’s done putting his feelings to words. There’s not much else for you to do, except hold him and try to give his mind something new to entertain itself with. Something nice. 

“Shall I tell you a story, love?” 

**Author's Note:**

> [RP/Askblog for the series.](http://requisitionforms.tumblr.com/)


End file.
